It's Great to be 8!!!

I can hardly believe it but my Avonleah is eight years old!  I'm so blessed to have this amazing, vivacious, intelligent, silly girl in my home.  We thought we would never be able to have children and Avonleah was the first of our three miracles. . .and from that very special Christmas Eve in 2004 to this day she has been a delight(and often a challenge :) in my life. Here's our list of 8 things you may or may not know about this awesome girl.

1. She is officially in the second grade but spends all day doing 3rd and 4th grade school work and we recently found out her reading comprehension was in the 9th grade! 
2. She is in love love love with books. . .so much in fact that we have to ground her from reading . . .she cries when we tell her to put her books away!
3. She has a "unique" very "white girl" style of dance she calls "Avonleah style" that involves the pointing of fingers in the air and the Elaine from Seinfeld style of jerking motions. It is quite a sight to see.
4. She has spent the last year really studying the gospel of Jesus Christ and gaining a testimony so she would feel certain that she wanted to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  It has been a decision that she has not taken lightly and after her interview with our Bishop she was glowing and so excited for her upcoming baptism.
5. She loves food . . .and has learned to follow recipes and cook this year.  She has used her amazing math skills to double or half recipes for me and is really quite a good cook . . .she just has a hard time not testing the food before it's finished
6. At first she was not excited about the added responsibility of being a big sister again but as soon as Abigail was born she has risen to the challenge and proven to be a very nurturing big sister and very helpful and patient with bouncing our fussy little baby.
7. She has an amazing sense of humor and is very witty!  Her humor and optimism have helped us all laugh through many hard things.
8. She is so beautiful and makes friends so easily . . .she is often the girl on the playground who includes those who don't have anyone to play with.  She is learning to be a good friend to all types of personalities and we are so proud of her efforts. 

For her birthday we celebrated Harry Potter style and wore our wizard glasses, we got to go on a secret surprise adventure to Build a Bear where she adopted "Rainbow Hugs", and we celebrated with chocolate cake and butterbeer!  The best part of the cake was when she saw it in all of its not so elegant looking style she said, "mom it's just like Harry's cake, you know it's kind of smooshed cuz Hagrid sat on it!"  It was the best. . .as for butterbeer. . .whew we tried two different top secret recipes and decided we weren't true wizard and witches yet because it wasn't our favorite!  To top the day off she received her very own Bible and Book of Mormon in a sparkly pink case!  Happy Birthday my beautiful girl I'm so happy I get to be your mother!